Raid0 possible in Latitude E6400?

Hi everybody!

After reading this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=343323
about the possibility of a second hdd in the Latitude E Series I wonder if it is possible to use Raid0 with E6400 as mentioned in the manual.

Looking after it in the Bios I can't find any Raid Modus for SATA-Operation.

Any ideas???

 

The raid setup is part of the ICH10R controller and it appears when you have more than 1 HDD connected to the PC.

What you can do is to connect eg a eSata HDD or install a HDD in the modular bay.

This isn't very practical using HDD's as the modular bay only supports 1.8" drives.
Creating an array using the internal + eSata would be very risky IMHO.
On top of that 1.8" HDD's are slow and capacity is low compared to 2.5".
It just isn't feasible using HDD's in my opinion!

The one and only option IMHO is to get 2 SSD's (1x2.5" and 1x1.8").
Intel is about to ship the 160GB SSD's available in both form factors.

This would give you a very fast, but very expensive 320GB raid-0.
The Intel drives are also available in 80GB capasity.

There are other SSD vendors but be careful if and when you buy as performance has been an issue.

 

I have ICH9M Raid Controller not a ICH10R! I plan to use a Lenovo Ultrabay Slim II Second HDD Bay (for Lenovo T400/T500) that seems to fit in the E6400.
So I could have two 2.5" SSDs in my Laptop.

You are telling me the Raid Option will appear in Bios, if a second hdd is connected either using E-Sata or Sata on Modular Bay????

At the moment I can only see these Sata Operation Modes in Bios: ATA, AHCI and IRRT

 

The raid configuration does not appear in the bios.
It will appear just after the first "bios" screen has ended, right before the OS is loaded.
You press Ctrl+I (if I remember correctly), this will take you to the Intel raid configuration.

It doesn't matter if you have ICH10R or ICH9M as the configuration is identical. (E6400 has the ICH9M-E SATA RAID Controller)

If the Lenovo bay works, please let me know.

 

I Just checked with an external hdd connected by E-Sata. There is still no Raid Option in Sata Operation in Bios! Intel Matrix Storage Manager offers me the possibility to create a Raid1 Volume directly after Bios loading, but no Raid1!

I've Sata Operation set to IRRT, Bios is A11.

 

Sata is set to IRRT on my system as well.

I'll check it out as soon as possible.

I received the 8GB memory kit 30min ago so it might take a while. ;-)

Even if raid-0 is not an option, 2xSSD should give you a huge jump in performance.

Intel specifications for the ICH9M-E controller follows.

Intel® I/O Controller Hub 9M Enhanced (ICH9M-Enhanced)
AF82801IEM 676 μ-BGA Includes all features of ICH9M, plus RAID 0/1 and Intel® Active Management Technology 4.0 support.

Follow this link http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/319505.pdf
to read about the GM45.

 

I'll get the Lenovo HDD Bay next week. Then I'll check if it works and will post some photos of it in the thread mentioned in my initial post...

 

Once you put the Dell E6500 bay in place, you will surely see a Raid section popup after bios. It shows you which drives are part of the Raid and which are not. And also if you press CTRL+I it will show the raid config menu. I hope the Lenovo works for you.

 

I've used an external hdd by E-Sata that should be the same as plugin in an hdd in the modular bay. In the Raid section popup after bios when pressing CTRL+I I only got the option to create a new Recovery Volume, which I think is the IRRT mechanism that is based on Raid1.

Has nobody ever tried to create an Raid0 Volume instead of RAID1 provided by IRRT (Intel Rapid Recovery Technology)?

 

Hi Anvil,

Sorry about the unrelated post but I couldn't find anyone else with Server 2008 on Latitude E6400. I was trying to install Server 2008 x64 on my E6400 but it doesn't seem to want to accept the NIC drivers (Intel 825xx Gigabit Platform). How did you manage to install this, if you have? And the other drivers like BT, SM Bus, etc?